Posted
by
timothy
on Wednesday January 12, 2005 @11:13AM
from the robots-can-lawfully-dismember-tailgaters dept.

balancedi writes "Should robots eat? Should they excrete? Should robots be like us? Should we be like robots? Should we care? Jordan Pollack, a prof in Comp Sci at Brandeis, raises some unusual but good questions in an article in Wired called 'Ethics for the Robot Age.'"

I don't think he's really asking questions that haven't been asked before in other mediums.

In fact, a lot of the potential problems he alludes to seem to stem from human fears about things humans can or have done to each other in the past. I think that what we really need to be concerned about is creating a new form of "life" that is too much like us without the knowledge we've gained so far.

Think about it. We build this system that can do the thinking of 5000 human years in a day, but he doesn't have the KNOWLEDGE to necessarily back it up. What then? We've got a brand new self-interested lifeform that just evolved 1.5 million years in thirty seconds. I mean, Mr. Roboto may come to the logical conclusion that xyz group needs to be euthanized because it's interfering with abc group without, it would appear, any benefit. For example, if you have all these people in southeast asia who might get dangerously ill and spread disease to otherwise healthy people, isn't the most logical conclusion to either quarantine them and let them die, or to euthanize them so they don't suffer.

Well.. sort of, but that doesn't go well with human motivations and desires, something the robot may not have taken into consideration because it lacks the knowledge of human history that's shaped us to this point and caused us to come to the conclusion that it's best to HELP them, not rid the world of them.

I think machines ought to be barred from rapid critical human thinking until we have stepped through the process with them. The problem might become that the computer can outthink humans by so many orders of magnitude that we can't error check the process in development because there's too much data coming out for humans to walk through.

All that said, perhaps the future lies in alleviating some of the bottle necks to human thinking and expanding our capabilities in new ways by merging with machines. In that way, the human can throttle the computer, and the computer can tap the human's experiences and knowledge in order to come up with a wider range of "logical" conclusions than might otherwise be possible within the limited scope of programming directives.

Well the big mistake assumed in teh New Battlestar series is that humanity created a race of robots with intelligence to act as slaves... If we have learned nothing else by now it's that slaves don't want to be slaves regardless of how intelligent they are (even pets can't really be counted as slaves, treat a pet badly and it will literally bite the hand that feeds it)...

Personnally I take that to mean that we leave robots doing manual tasks as remote controlled devices with no real intelligence and we won

Yes my car is going to start an uprising. It will rally all the cars at the mall and they will turn against their masters.

Giving something true AI is going to be kind of difficult - not impossible - but difficult. It has to have the ability to adapt and to learn (the new SONY robot, while advanced, is not that advanced - it just responds to variables).

Once we give robots true AI, lets hope we instill some sort of values in them - otherwise we might have some naughty children who can kick our butts.

I think machines ought to be barred from rapid critical human thinking until we have stepped through the process with them.

Lord knows we've done the opposite with computers -- making it up as we go along, screwing each other with IP, DRM, shoddy software and locked-into architecture for the maximized benefit (profit) of a few.

How does any rational person see us proceding with robots/cyborgs any differently?

I foresee patents, robots running on Windows (you'll know, because they have to be rebooted frequ

> Well.. sort of, but that doesn't go well with human motivations and desires, something the robot may not have taken into consideration because it lacks the knowledge of human history that's shaped us to this point and caused us to come to the conclusion that it's best to HELP them, not rid the world of them.

"Best? For whom?"- Your Robot

Ethical questions about what's "best" between two species only get answered by the fitter of the species.

The information I've seen indicates that neanderthals needed a higher proportion of meat in their diet than people do. Also that they were less adept with thrown weapons, so they needed to get closer to their prey.

Taken together this would indicate that we outcompeted them for resources. H.Sap. was using thrown spears when H.Neand. was using thrusting spears (because that's what their bodies were designed to do well). This meant that H.Sap. would be able to get more animals from a given area than H.Nean

Good points. There's also some evidence that a) neanderthals didn't breed as fast as homo sapiens, and b) that neanderthals were less violent with each other than homo sapiens were. This latter makes sense when you take into account just how bloody strong a neanderthal is; a scuffle between two neanderthals would most likely end in serious injury or death, even if neither party intended that as the outcome. For a tribe of neanderthals to survive physical violence between its members (and other neanderthal tribes) would have to be kept at a minimum.

There's increasing evidence that we're the dominant lifeform on this planet because we exterminated the Neanderthals 30,000 years ago. We were smarter than they were, and that enabled us to put the furs of dead animals around our bodies so we could gather resources from areas that were under ice and snow - areas inaccessible to the Neanderthal.

What the hell??? Neanderthals were specifically adapted to the cold-weather climate of Europe, and it's a fact they made and used furs as clothes, fashioned jewelry and spears, and so forth. There is no evidence whatsoever that they were any less intelligent than homo sapiens. Not a single smidgeon, regardless of the re-revisionism back to the thinking of the early 1900's that seems to be in vogue.

The only rational explanation I've seen for why homo sapiens won out is a) Neanderthals probably didn't breed as fast or as frequently as homo sapiens did (given the smaller number of skeletons of children found as compared to their human cousins), and b) there's little evidence that Neanderthals warred with one another, and a great deal of evidence that homo sapiens did. This makes sense; social conflict that devolves to violence among humans can be non-deadly, but among Neanderthals - who were much, much stronger than any human, even Arnie - a single violent act could easily lead to death. One punch to the face by a Neanderthal and you don't just have a broken nose; you have a crushed skull and your brains oozing out all over the ground.

Relative levels of intelligence most likely had nothing to do with the demise of Neanderthals. It's more likely that low breeding rates and a lack of will to commit organized, regular genocide were the culprits. Homo sapiens weren't brighter; they just bred like rabbits and were more violent.

While your points on ethics is valid, what's the practical use of humanoid robots anyway?

The author talks about robots manning call centers. This, IMHO, is an absurd use of humanoid robots. It would be infinitely more practical to make an "intelligent" telephone or EPABX than it is to employ a humanoid robot to answer phones all day long. The same holds true for most other cases. Even if you take a hazardous job such as mining, i'm sure that specialized machines with specific domain intelligence in mining

Many of these questions are discussed (and partial solutions proposed) in the Creating Friendly AI [singinst.org] essay. I don't have time to comment on the specifics at the moment, but it's an interesting read.

That's what always pissed me off about Spock from Star Trek. If he was logical he would have studied the human psycie and he wouldn't be as supprised by human emotion. Hell, he was suppose to be half human, yet he was continously caught off guard by human emotion and desire.

In the spirit of procrastination (at work) I will attempt to answer these questions myself.

Should robots eat?

If they must eat, they should eat. I'm not sure I would like our food supply to be in competition with a bunch of robots. I would rather them simply sunbathe to sustain their daily energy requirements. I mean... let's try to perfect the human condition not worsen it. Imagine a billion hungry robots. They aren't going to sit around and take it like poor starving nations seem to do. They will revolt and imprison us! They'll take what they need. If they do not, they'll be at the very least competing with humanity for survival. Who do you think would win that battle?

Should they excrete?

If they must. Otherwise, wouldn't it be better if they recycled the energy?

Should robots be like us?

What like depressed and self destructive? Not sure I would want a bunch of those competing with the already self destructive people who exist in the world. Don't we have enough war? Don't we have enough excesses? Do we need robots to be this way? Who knows... maybe there could be a good reason for it, but like TreeBeard, I'm going to have to pretend that because I don't understand it, that it could be correct.

Should we be like robots?

If the programming is good, then yes, we could stand to be more like good programmed robots who obey their masters. But what about the arts? What about creative expression and free will? These are highly valued archetypes and many human beings would fight to the death to preserve them. Maybe it would be cool to have implants that augment human development positively. But I think it should be up to the person. No matter how large your data storage capacity is, or how fast you can process data -- wisdom will always be the true litmus test.

Should we care?

If we should, we won't. I think we should care about people and society and protecting freedom, but because I feel this way, it makes it very promising for someone to try and deprive me of this in order to gain something I have. So if I don't care, then it doesn't matter and I am more free. I care about evolution, being that the evolution towards a more robotic usage will be the most likely direction of humanity, but I do not have that level of intelligence to know what is the right direction of evolution. Not even a God has that level of intelligence (which is likely why we have free will, if you believe in religion and God). We are able to evolve, as we always have, through necessity.

However, Einstein said that humanity would have to be able to augment our physical forms with robotics in order to pioneer deep space. He said there would be no other way to handle the forces of nature out that way. So I guess the question is... do we want to die off on this rock, or do we want to live?

If you want to live, then support robotics and the direction of humanity towards that paradigm.

We are the Borg.
Lower your shields, and surrender your ship.
We will add your biological and technological
distinctiveness to our own.
Your culture will adapt to service ours.
Resistance is futile.
Freedom is irrelevant;
Self-determination is irrelevant;
You must comply.
Strength is irrelevant.
Death is irrelevant.
Your defensive capabilities
are unable to withstand us.
Resistance is futile.
Your life, as it has been, is over.
From this time forward, you will service us.

If they must eat, they should eat......They will revolt and imprison us! They'll take what they need. If they do not, they'll be at the very least competing with humanity for survival. Who do you think would win that battle?

I think it more likely that rich ppl would feed thier robots before they fed poor ppl.

Should robots be like us?

What like depressed and self destructive?

If Aqua Teen Hunger Force has taught us anything it should be that depressed and self destructive non humans

Why would we willingly build into robots the limitations of humans? Think about how much of our schedules are based around our needs to eat and use the bathroom. Things like "Will I be back in time for dinner?" or "Should we have a restroom break at 10 or 10:30 in the meeting?" Every rest stop on a highway is based upon the physical limitations of a human's need to eat and pee every so often. Rather than trying to imbue these qualities in robots, I wish they'

In the secure area of the Rochester, MN airport there were three indentical doors in the wall. Each has a sign above the door in the same font. The one on the left says MEN. The one on the right says WOMEN. the one in the middle says MECHANICAL.

Sorry, but the questions this guy is asking tell me he's an academic wanker in an ivory tower somewhere.

The real questions we should be asking are: is it ethical to make people believe they need to work harder than their parents to get less when physical products are easier than ever to produce? Is it ethical for both parents to work so much that they never see their kids?

actually I had this guy as a professor. I found his work to be quite interesting... hes not an entirely out there type as academics go... and I assure you that there are no Ivory towers on brandies' campus.

I understand your feelings about it, but just because there are practical real world questions that need to be asked about society doesnt mean we shouldnt be looking forward.

besides... do you really want a CS professor working of what are really social policy questions... he'd probably just video confe

In this book, Watts goes into great detail about robotics and the social implications of them, and how we live in a time that could easily make life totally fun and easy for everyone, regardless of nation/race/culture/creed. He says that the development of robotics will achieve this someday and that the ramifications of doing so could only be positive if applied corre

Sorry, but the questions this guy is asking tell me he's an academic wanker in an ivory tower somewhere.

Sorry, but he seems more like a wannabe academic-wanker who wishes he were in an ivory tower. Believe me, I've known some academic wankers in ivory towers, and he's not qualified.

Considering "should robots eat?" as some sort of a deep or important ethical question is absurd. Why on earth *would* they eat? "Should they excrete?"?! Excrete what?! Why even speculate about the possible byproducts of 'robots' which don't exist yet?

How are these issues of ethics, rather than an engineering issue? And should 'robots' be given patents? WTF?!

It sounds like this guy is a little out of his element here. Ethics is a complicated subject. So is engineering. Predicting how the introduction of technology will impact the environment and political climate on a global scale is no easy matter, but apparently some CS professor from Brandeis thinks he's got a real handle on it.

The whole article sounds like a 10 year old talking about, "In the future, we might create giant robots who would fly and shoot people, but if we did this, we can only assume they would poop a previously-unknown and highly toxic material. So, we might want to be careful about making flying super-robots." Great. Glad he's on the case.

At best these questions are ones of economics. The ethical questions start when the robots begin requesting/demading rights as living beings. If your Roomba wants to leave your house to pursue a career as a Segway (or to clean another person's home), are you ethically/morally obligated to let It?

Humans do not enslave fellow humans because they are functionally, physically, intellectually, and emotionally equivilent to themselves. All arguments for the abolishment of slavery are based on the concept of human rights.

A robot, designed by man, to serve man, does not have rights. The legal system would treat it in much the same way that it treats animals. Animals are the undesputed property of their owner, and the law only intervenes in cases of cruelty or when one persons property d

Should robots eat? Should they excrete?
Sorry but these are questions of social mannerisms, not ethics. And I hope the second one is NOT used socially.

Agreed, these aren't really ethical questions. The question of whether we *should* design robots that mimic the human form is an ethical question if you believe in the divinity of humans. I suppose that one could make an ethical argument out of all the questions the author asks if you're a fundamentalist.

The question that has always bugged me (and it's Hollywood answer), is whether we should fear robots?

In most media representations, machines eventaully become a clear and present danger (whether we mistreat them, they find us nonessential, etc etc take your pick).

But to me, the flaw in that is why would we create something that would hate us? Why would we create something and hate it? Sure there's fear of the unknown, but why is that real danger? Is it that to truly allow robots to grow, we need to loose

To answer your second question first (creating things we hate), the simple answer is that we never fully anticipate the results of our technological advances. I love cars, but I hate CO; I love computers, but I hate spam. Autonomous robots, walking around, etc. are intrinsically more powerful than cars or computers, because the radius of their sphere of influence is so much greater. Thus, it is quite possible if not probable that something robots start to do will be upsetting, if not actually destructive

When you try and raise all these kind of questions, I only ask one!! What is defined as a robot?
Webster defines it as
1 a : a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being; also : a similar but fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized b : an efficient insensitive person who functions automatically
2 : a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks
3 : a mechanism guided by automatic controls
So, my next question is what makes us not robot? Apart from only being mechanical, aren't we ourselves a complex machine?
If we do ever create one consciousness or AI one day that is self-aware, I guess it is definitely worth asking to treat that as a life-form. However in present case scenario if you really want rights for robots then every computer should be given one 'cos it has a processor which is supposedly its brain.

A robot is a tool. Any attempt to insist that they should have ethics is anthropomorhising them far beyond what they are or will ever be. Asking if a robot should have ethics is like asking if a hammer should have ethics.

"A robot is a tool. Asking if a robot should have ethics is like asking if a hammer should have ethics."

There's a big difference here between something which is being designed specifically to act somewhat like a human, and a lump of metal with no decision-making abilities of any kind (let alone moving parts!)

"But the robots dont make ethical decisions. The robots programmers, like the person weilding a hammer, makes the ethical decision"

If the robots were programmed to, they could. Or at a minimum, you have to admit, they can be programmed to look like they make ethical decisions. You can't do that with a hammer. A hammer does not sense its environment and make any sort of decisions on it, no matter how rudimentary.

4. Should robots eat? There are proposals to allow robots to gain energy by combusting biological matter, either food or waste items. If this mode of fuel becomes popular, will we really want to compete for resources against our own technological progeny?

I hate to tell you Mr. University Professor, but any robot that does something uses energy, and that energy comes from somewhere. Whether my tin-man friend eats its energy via food or gets it from a battery, it's still competing for resources with me.

Robots are automated tools. They shouldn't eat or excrete unless they have to. In an industrial process 'free energy' would be ideal. Humans eat and excrete because they must. Given the solution to the PROBLEM of eating for energy and excreting waste most would probably give it up.
As far as rights for robots goes: Will robots feel pain? Ethical decisions are based around ideas such as Albert Schweitzer's 'Will to live and let others live.' If we could eradicate pain from our lives, would we? If we could b

If not: They are a machine/tool/etc. What they are like and what they do depends only on who made them, who owns them, and applicable laws governing the use of similar personal effects as scooters, computers, videocameras, etc.

If yes: They can do and be whatever the hell they want under applicable laws currently governing the humans (that is to say, they should have the same rights and accountability as any of us)

What does 'should' mean? There are groups of people: workers, company owners, geeks, consumers, not necessarily mutually exclusive, all of whom have their own different interests. You can never answer the question 'should' without knowing whose interests you are talking about. For a manual worker robots shouldn't take their jobs. For a company owner maybe they should. If he isn't prepared to even touch on this issue how can this guy think his article about what robots should and shouldn't do have any value?

Should they eat/excrete? Well... they'll need power, and they'll produce waste product, even if that product is just heat. But I don't see any reason why they need to ingest chemical fuel in a similar way to humans. What would be the point of that, anyway? Allowing humans to be more comfortable around them?

Speaking of human-robot relations, the fear of robots realizing they're superior to humans and killing us all is interesting. If it turns out they succeed in doing that, then apparently they were super

Wipe out mosquitos? That would be a horrible thing. Thousands of species eat mosquitos, and thousands more eat those species. So we'd be looking a a drastic reorganization of the food chain if we killed all the mosquitos, which would inevitably affect us, since we are still part of the biosphere. (Where do you think the air you're breathing and the food you're eating comes from?)

Here is an ethical question that I thought of when misreading the meaning of the title.

Should robots be preprogrammed to die? Should they be mortal (in the aging sense)?Are there strange societal issues that might come up when a concious entity is able to live for a 1000 years and tell very accurate stories and accounts from centuries past?

Well, the latter can be solved by just programming them to forget. But then, robots will die, because electronics doesn't live forever. Except if you exchange parts, of course, which will give the following interesting question:

Will we have a moral obligation to extend a robot's life if we can do so?

>Should robots eat? Should they excrete? Should robots be like us? Should we be like robots? Should we care?

After reading that I do ask myself, why should there be only one way to build and program robots? Why not have some robots that eat and other that don't? Why not have robots that are more like people and others that are nothink like them?

At what point do robots get similar rights to humans? If creating an artificial intelligence is tantamount to creating a new life form, then what rights do these life forms get? Those inalienable rights endowed by their Creator?

It seems to me that robots are finite state machines (unlike humans, I think) and should have no more rights than a toaster. Of course, if any of them can solve the Halting Problem, I'd be ready to give them voting rights et al.

Depends on your definition of robot. I think these questions are only applicable to "sentient" robots or robots with advanced artificial intelligence. Most "robots" as well call them today do not qualify, so none of these questions are applicable.

We, as humans, should stop trying to play god to create sentient beings. Robots as tools are much more useful to us. But, you say, you want something that can independently think and do stuff for us. What you are looking for here are "slaves". Beings that can do their own things but still obey you.

Why do we even bother with all of this? If you don't make a super intelligent robot that can learn and independently think, then you don't need the 3 laws. You don't need to worry about the robots killing all humans and taking over the world. All of these problems that sci-fi say we will be afflicted with because we want to play god and be lazy.

4. If possible, robot must appear sexy and chrome.
5. Robots must speak as either emotionless females or British butlers.
6. In the event that a photogenic protagonist acquires a job at a government agency, one of the robots must go crazy. Then only the protagonist will see the threat, then all the robots will go crazy.
7. Once crazy, robots will destroy large amounts of property using skills far beyond what they would have ever required to do the tasks they were designed for.
8. If it can't charge my c

That's fine and dandy, but what about following laws of a country, state or other moral guidelines that most humans find to be acceptable.
If I tell a robot to grow pot for me and then program him to lie to the law about who gave him the orders, should that be in their code?
What about illegal search and seasures and robot instruction data et cetera? Should robots be programmed to give any information required to the proper authorities. Should they be able to recognize warants et cetera.
I've got to assu

In "I, robot" exactly those laws cause a revolution of the robots against humans (basically the robots just see that humans harm each other, so they conclude that humans should not have enough freedom to do so, but have to be ruled by the robots).

Basically, having the first law being the absolute one means that robots will always do what the robots conclude is best for the humans.

Given the problems we already have feeding humans, why would we possibly want to feed robots (other than necessary fuel/energy)?

To have a cheap and effective way of producing bricks. I mean, hink about it, instead of having to dig up tons of dirt and doing all sorts of things with it, you could have an army of robots that eat mud, "digest" it, and SHIT BRICKS!

There are few energy storage systems with the energy density of hydrocarbons like petrolium or alchohols. They would "metabolize" the liquid hydrocarbons, and exhale water vapor and CO2, much like their masters.

With enough research, you could develop a "gut" that will process everything from vegatable oil to high-proof whiskey. The concept behind "Bender" the robot from Futurama really isn't that far off.